


I'm gonna be on tonight

by Mama_Nihil



Series: Diamonds and Curls [3]
Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, I have no idea right now, Joker wants back in the limelight, Lovers with projects, Masturbation, Murder, Not super Graphic, Partnership, Violence, and conversation, but better safe than sorry, but close enough, craziness, father issues deluxe, it’s just more of the same really, more tags to come, not suicide attempt exactly, soul mates, where words end and all that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:54:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21574075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mama_Nihil/pseuds/Mama_Nihil
Summary: It’s inevitable. This is where they were meant to end up. Joker just needs the spark, someone to plant the idea in his brain. A man who thrives on adoration, he’s been fading away from the spotlight.It’s time for the Clown Prince to enter the national stage.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Harleen Quinzel, Joker/Harley Quinn
Series: Diamonds and Curls [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561540
Comments: 137
Kudos: 61





	1. Ghost town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do you remember the good old days before the ghost town?  
> We danced and sang, and the music played in a de boomtown
> 
> ([The Specials](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4))

There it was. The medicine factory – the _ex_ -factory. The husk of it, disemboweled and forlorn. What used to be a teeming anthill of activity but no longer produced anything. It just lay there, a grey slab of recent history flanked by scraggly trees. Not a soul about. Not a movement, no trucks pulling out or arriving. Just the odd leaflet blowing in the wind, skittering over half-dried asphalt.

Arthur laid a hand on the fence, fingers hooking in the diamond holes. His other hand was rammed deep in his jacket pocket, and his hair blew in his face where world-weary trenches were deepening by the minute.

“Regretting it?” Harley asked.

“Eh.” He shrugged. “What’s the point of that?”

“No point. Things happen all the time without there being a point.”

“I don’t regret,” he said, but she heard it his voice. It was all he did, regret. The thing about chaos was that you got unforeseen consequences. Like having your motives misunderstood.

Not that Arthur cared about the news.

He leaned his head against the wire mesh with a sigh. He was always doubtful about his handiwork, but this particular deed seemed to weigh heavier on him than others. “First I let them out of the hospital and burned their records,” he mumbled. “And then I took away their pills. They have no crutches left. I did to them what almost killed me.”

Harley crossed her arms and leaned with her shoulder against the fence. “But it didn’t. In the end it freed you. And freedom is nothing if not dangerous.”

“Yes, but… I don’t know. Did I leave them in the rain with no umbrella?”

Her chest sucked inwards, that rare feeling when he confided in her. When he let slip… not his mask exactly, because who knew what was what when it came to him, but when he allowed himself not to uphold his insanity. When he let the craziness rest for a while and just showed his humanity, fragmented as it was.

“I never meant to lead anything, you know.”

“I know.”

“They chose me as their figurehead. And I just…” He gestured vaguely. “Went with the flow.”

“There are no neutral discourses,” she muttered, not really meaning for him to hear.

“Huh?”

She grimaced. “If you change something for the better it only gets better for some. There are always losers, in any system.”

“Yeah…” He slumped against the fence, wire digging deeper into his forehead. “I guess.”

“Hey!”

They both straightened up. A man in dusty boots and worker’s overalls came walking towards them.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh…” Harley put on her sweetest, most harmless smile. “Just looking.”

“Well, you can haul your tourist asses off the premises. Nothing to see here.”

“Is it really empty?”

The man frowned as he put a cigarette to his mouth and sucked at it instead of replying.

“Are you guarding an empty factory?” Harley insisted.

He shot her a suspicious look. “ _No_. I’m just here to get my sweater.” He jerked his head at a rag hanging over his shoulder.

“A damn shame what happened.”

“You can say that again,” the man muttered, thrown a bit off course by her calculated friendliness. “But really, you shouldn’t be hanging round here. The place is crawling with rats, and in no time it’ll be a heroin den, so…”

Harley nodded, exaggerated agreement of the kind people got off on. “It’s all going to hell, isn’t it?”

The man winced at her language, oh fuck, she never did learn to watch her tongue. Her priorities were so out of synch. She thought corruption, abuse, and overdoses were bad, but what really got people’s underwear in a twist was a collection of syllables that revealed you to be less than a lady.

“So much for Joker, eh?”

Harley started. “What?”

The man shrugged and turned to look at the abandoned factory. “Well, he did this.”

Arthur shifted beside her, crept deeper into his jacket.

“I used to root for that guy, but now he’s gone wild. What’s the point of sabotaging a factory? How’s that good for the people?”

“Good for… the people,” Arthur murmured.

“Yeah. You know how many lost their job because of this? He used to be Joker, the people’s Joker, but now he’s just a clown again.”

“But then, what could he really do for them?” Harley cut in. “He doesn’t have any actual power, does he?”

The man raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “He has the whole of criminal fucking Gotham.”

She winced. _Language_. But this guy didn’t have to spend useless energy on pretending to be a fucking lady.

“And he has a face,” the man added and flicked his cigarette butt.

“A… face?”

“I’m just saying, if he spoke, people would listen. That’s what he did once. But now it’s just money, money, money. Just like the rest of them.”

Harley glanced at Arthur. He looked stunned.

 _Oh no_.

“Money?” he forced out through twitching lips, but the man didn’t know him, didn’t recognize the most wanted man in the city. He didn’t know what that twitch presaged.

“What else could it be?” He made a disgusted grimace. “People are only rebels until they get what they want.”

 _Fuuuuck_. She could see Joker deliberating: was this affront enough to merit punishment, or wasn’t it worth the fuss? “Come on, let’s go.”

“Would you say _you_ care about money?” Arthur asked, voice gone all soft and childish, that velvet veneer of self-control that hid a ravine of rage.

“’Course I do, but only because I don’t have any,” the man said, voice gone hard to match Joker’s softness, Jesus fuck, this was _not_ going well.

“Arthur…”

Ignoring her, Joker said, “And what would you do to _get_ money? Where would you draw the line?”

“You mean would I mug someone? Commit murder, like him? I’m an honest worker, pal.”

_No, no no no no, don’t call him that, fuck._

Joker smiled, eyes alight like a Christmas tree. “Honest work – what is that, exactly?”

“Come _on_ ,” Harley urged through clenched teeth. “We’re done here.”

“Well, not fucking banking, that’s for sure,” the man said. “And not fucking politics.”

“Digging ditches, building walls,” Joker almost-whispered, his voice feather-light. “Working at a factory.”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“A factory that makes drugs.”

“So? People need drugs.”

“Factories that make cigarettes, or guns.”

The man seemed to grow, pulling himself up to his full height. Posturing like a peacock, but where the peacock had emerald feathers this guy had dusty overalls and eyes bloodshot from alcohol. “What’s your fucking point?”

“Any way to make money is better than not making any money,” Joker said innocently.

“Of course.”

“So it’s better to be a cog in the system that kills people than to be a parasite.”

The man teetered on the edge of answering. She could see the wheels turning, the anger mounting, because no one wanted the unvarnished truth.

“And what about _winning_ money?” Joker asked.

The man’s eyes narrowed, any second now the punch would come. “You asking me if I gamble?”

Joker shrugged.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it if people want to waste their wages on a fucking roulette wheel. That’s their choice.”

“And choice is _so_ important, isn’t it?” Joker raised a shoulder, sudden campness sealing it. Harley could see it run the man's patience raw, and they really should be leaving now, she wasn’t in the mood to soak the blood out of their clothes. “So what were you really doing in there?” Joker jerked his head at the factory.

“I told you,” the man growled, right hand balling into a fist. “I got my sweater.”

“You sure there’s not a stash in there somewhere? A little something the looters didn’t find? The black market for happy pills must be _booming_.”

The accusation tipped the scales, but of course Joker had known it would. Before the man had even taken aim, Joker had whipped out a knife and pushed it against his throat. The man rose on his toes, hands half-raised to parry the move too late.

“Now, now, let’s not blow this out of proportion.” Joker tutted. “Just making conversation, see? People always ask each other about work. So why is it so wrong when I do the same?” Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, he asked, “Is it because I asked you about _money_? Not about your good, honest work, but about how you actually make money? Well, you started _that_ , didn’t you?”

“I…”

“You said Joker is just in it for the money,” he explained in sing-song. “Well, I’m here to tell you, I don’t give a fuck. Not anymore. When you’re not in the system, you don’t need it. I operate a gift economy.” He giggled. “And back when I did work, it was all very altruistic, entertaining people.” He made a show of gasping, and his eyes widened in childish astonishment. “Oh… Is _that_ what you’re proposing? Why, that’s a very interesting idea, I must say. To go back to my roots, as it were. Yes. _Very_ interesting. I’ll definitely take it into consideration.”

The man glanced at Harley, forehead glistening, but she just spread her hands with a smile. He swallowed, and the knife rose a little on the bulge in his throat.

“You know what? You paid for your freedom. The scales are back in balance. Thank you.” Joker took away the knife, and the man staggered back against the fence, clutching his throat. Why didn’t he run? “And when the time comes, if you want to apply, just give them my card.” Joker produced a playing card seemingly out of nowhere and tucked it in the man’s breast pocket. “Now run along, I’m bored with you.”

Wide-eyed and weak-kneed, the man set off at a wobbly sprint.

“And if you do apply,” Joker called after him, “just… please _don’t_ be boring!”

The sound of the man’s feet pounded the ground as he disappeared into the falling darkness. Joker smoothed out his jacket and brushed some dust off it. Perhaps sensing her watching him, he looked up with a silent _what?_

“You got a new idea.”

He grinned, a lazy grin that told her she’d have to crowbar it out of him.

She rolled her eyes. “Alright. Let’s go, then?”

He threw a look towards the factory. “What if there _is_ a stash in there?”

 _What if_. The words that summed up her life with him. “So what? You can’t eat them or you get all dull, and you don’t want to sell them.”

“True.” Sighing, he hunched his shoulders. “The things I do for my art.”

They started walking, him with his gaze lost in the gravel at his feet, her lost in the maze of his cryptic monologue. _If you want to apply, just give them my card. Back to my roots_. What could it mean? “You miss entertaining,” she mumbled, not a question because he wouldn’t answer it, but she could detect the brief look of sorrow on his face. Yep, that was it. He was bored with the mindless monomania of Gotham’s criminals. They did only care about money, whereas Joker cared about his art. So how could he find a way back to it? 

“You didn’t entertain for altruistic reasons,” she pointed out, mostly to herself. “You just love it when the crowd laps it up.”

He shot her a cheeky, side-eyed look. _I do, don’t I?_ Never one to feel shame for his most taboo traits.

“You’ve thought of a way to entertain again.”

He pursed his lips and looked up into the sky, feigning innocence. Goading her, urging her to solve the mystery. Always feeding to her cat-like instincts. Making her work for it.

“You can’t be a comedian again, you’d be arrested.”

He just cocked his head, smiling his secret little smile.

“Unless…” She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve come up with a way to do it that’s safe. Protected. Sealed off. But how? You can’t be in front of an audience unless you handpicked it. And who can handpick an audience?”

Even as she said it, a series of images appeared and disappeared in her mind. Private parties, Wayne’s fundraisers, Murray Franklin preening in front of an adoring studio rabble.

 _Studio_. TV. Sealed off, separated from the world by cameras, it could be anywhere, underground, far away from where the program was broadcast, from where it was watched.

She chuckled. She didn’t even have to look at him. The very air around them brightened as he understood that she’d cracked it. _Let him bask in it for a while_ , she told herself. _Don’t kill it with logic_. See, she could learn. She could avoid repeating her mistakes, keep her soul-destroying analysis to herself. Never mind that this new scheme was a ploy to get back in the limelight, and never mind the associated question: _Are you prepared to out yourself to the whole country just for a round of applause?_

Because she knew the answer, knew why he needed the adoration. He’d never said it, but it was obvious. He had to be the king, or he was nothing. If he was adored, perhaps they wouldn’t kill him, simple as that. It was logic on a visceral level, a question of survival: if people didn’t like him, he was alone against the mob. If they loved him, he might live to see another day. The body’s knowledge that being celebrated was better than being beat up. 

She smiled and shook her head. “Really, Arthur. The Joker Show?”


	2. Ich will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ich will eure Stimmen hören  
> Ich will die Ruhe stören  
> Ich will dass ihr mich gut seht  
> Ich will dass ihr mich versteht
> 
> ([Rammstein](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOnSh3QlpbQ))

“What the hell are you on about?” The guy who’d stood up was a middle man from the eastern part of town. Pigtail and permanent scowl. “This is a big operation, but what’s in it for us? You’re going to _give away_ money? Whose money? Ours?”

Joker spread his hands with a smile, looking slightly ridiculous at the head of the table. “Gotta lure them in somehow.” He was so thin in his frayed suit and makeup, how was it possible he could marionette his way around the beef in the room? “So who here has connections in the industry? We need camera operators, makeup artists, sound people. We need bodies to tape cables to the floor, and guards to keep the audience in line. We need lights and microphones and screens, we need a _fucking_ desk. Who’ll get me a desk?”

But the issue had been raised, and more men wanted to hear their own voices, _here we go_.“Whats in it for us? How will you pay us?”

“The payment is you get to keep your kneecaps.” Joker giggled. “Nah, the payment is I’m not going to give any money away, you idiots, because no one will fucking win, okay? The prize is a ruse. Who can win against me?”

He swept a pointed look across the room. The thugs muttered among themselves, and Harley took note on a page for moods: the fluctuating levels of loyalty they had to keep track of. She wrote them down like statements, as dry as the meetings in their calendar. Item: a faltering frown. Item: a pouty whisper. They’d discuss it later. He couldn’t get it through his painted head why the muscle had trouble following his reasoning. _Because they’re muscle, Arthur_ , she admonished him silently. He didn’t take the time to translate his fantastical plans to anything resembling lowbrow logic.

And yet when he turned his eyes on someone, they felt like the only person in the room. Was that his secret? His laser-like _attention_?

“You’re not paying us until it’s done and everyone’s dead, that’s your answer?”

“I never pay you.”

“But normally there’s a little something in the actual operation itself, isn’t there? Like a truck full of bills, that kind of thing? Where’s the truckload of bills in a fucking talk show, Joker? Is the wages we’ll get that we don’t _lose_ money?”

“Dare to dream.” He grinned. “Invest in something volatile. Isn’t that exciting enough to make up for–”

Another man stood up. “Well, I don't know about you, but I’m not in it for the excitement. I want guarantees: I do my job, I get my slice of the cake. This is bullshit.”

Joker also stood up. A fluid movement, the instincts of a dancer. ”No, it’s not.” 

So soft, and the mood changed again. Harley traced the shifting shape of it in her book. The magic was happening, the tectonic shift. The intangible sway, the silent power of madness. He was a fragile artiste, somewhere they all knew that, and yet…

And yet.

He reached inside his jacket, slowly, pointedly, smiling at them as he brought out a pen. The room fell silent as he played with it, eyes twinkling at the clean shine. _Such a shame if it were to be soiled_ , he seemed to say. Then he glanced with sudden sharpness at a couple of guys along the wall, and they stepped forward. There were always people ready to stand with him, and they were leaning in his direction now, concentrating their energies on his side of the room, marking his dominance with their dog-like fidelity.

A few muffled grunts, and then the dissent died down. Joker smiled gently. “ _Thank_ you.”

She knew what it was, and she didn’t. She experienced it herself on a daily basis. The way he navigated the wildest shoals with the mere hint of madness. When people knew what he was capable of but he didn’t do anything… it made them nervous. Had them at the edge of their seats, waiting. _When’s he going to snap? Who’s going to get a pen in their eye this time?_

“Now, back to the agenda,” he said, a quick look at this naked wrist to mark that they’d been wasting his time with their stupid demands for fair pay. “Who knows of a good hairdresser?”

***

For the TV spot, they only needed one camera operator and a few lights. They could have done it with a handheld video camera and Harley behind the lens, but he wanted it to “look professional”. Complete with that quivery pout that never failed to _fuck it_ persuade her. She was such a goner for this idiot.

He’d touched up the green and brushed it until it glowed. He’d made himself up – _last fucking time I’m doing it myself_ , he’d proclaimed dramatically, but of course it wasn’t – and he’d had Harley put a clothes pin at the back of his jacket to make it flatter his contours. Because it was true: he cared nothing for money, and he’d never replaced that old suit. All he seemed to need was hair color, which somehow just showed up from time to time like some fucking subscription. The place they slept in was hardly fit to charge rent for, and they didn’t need any more entertainment than what they created themselves. Food? They foraged through bins like the rats they were. Same thing with her clothes, which were even easier to find than food. People either gained or lost weight, or they kept buying the wrong thing at sales, because between what they tossed and her scissors-and-safety pin kit, she could manage any look. That left the odd foray into a drug store – her idea, because come on, they needed their vitamins – and top-ups of her notebooks and pen collection. All of which could be managed without money.

“We’re free,” he liked to say.

“Free to die of mold and malnourishment,” she liked to answer.

But not today. Today was a big day, and none of their usual banter had a place. 

“Is this okay?” he asked the cameraman, sitting this way and that, long legs folding and unfolding beneath the table like it even mattered what he did with his fucking legs. Fingers twitching like spiders, and the cameraman said yes, it was all fine, the light looked very beautiful on the white and the red and the green, on his cheekbones and jaw, and he smiled and tittered and made his _nah, you’re messing with me_ hands until the cameraman looked like he was about to lose his patience, and Harley had to step in.

“Puddin’,” she murmured, sidling up behind him and snaking her arms round his neck so her mouth ended up in the sharp, sweet smell of his hair. “Eyes on the prize. What’s the prize?”

His lashes lowered, touched skin. “Red as a river,” he whispered.

“That’s right. Now what do you have to do to get there?”

“Lure them in.”

“Right. Your best discipline, right? Your fucking super power. Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He reached up and touched her arm. “Still fooling _you_.”

“Exactly. Now calm the fuck down and do this.”

He nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Just a minute.” He leaned down to a bag on the floor and picked up a folded, battered book – his old joke diary.

“You still have that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She hesitated. That book. _A book of jokes_. Some taken from life, others were lives taken.

He opened it on a page full of scribbles, but the look on his face was doubtful. “Let’s not plan this,” he said.

“We have to.”

“We’ve already sent the rats out. Let the rest be a chain explosion, impossible to steer.”

“We’ll see.” 

Giving his shoulder a pat she slipped away, out of the camera eye, and took her place behind it. Joker straightened up, serious face on, hands gripping his journal like a rookie news anchor. Blinking too often, blinded by the light, by memories perhaps. A glaze formed, a sheen of moisture that turned his eyes pink, but when the cameraman told him to go for it, a smile pulled his lips apart like his face was going to split. Shimmering beads quivered on the cusp of falling, but the smile held and was red to make your heart burst.

“Good evening, Gotham.” He broke off to laugh, and a couple of tears spilled onto the teal triangle beneath his eyes. “I’ve missed you.”

Harley frowned. He wasn’t reading from the book, but then why the hell would he?

“Oh, Gotham.” He shook his head slowly, disbelieving. “We’re finally going to meet. For real. We’re going to _shake hands_. And I’m going to kill you, but not before you’ve gambled for the _big cash prize_.” He made a grand gesture at the heap of bills behind him, and the cameraman briefly panned and zoomed out to show the jaw-dropping size of it. “I think perhaps we got off on the wrong foot before,” he said as his pixelated face reappeared in the monitor, the grainy resolution making him look even more ominous than in real life. “But I’m going to make up for that. Makeup, ha ha!” He gestured at his face. “Uh, and… I’m offering everyone a spot. There’s a number on… uh, you’re going to see…” He looked down at the journal, but he hadn’t followed his scribbles. It couldn’t help him, because he had no idea where he was. “Who wants to test their luck? Come to the studio…”

 _Shit_.

Harley grabbed his makeup and dipped the brush in white, quick quick, just a few strokes to smooth out any recognizable features, some red on her lips, smooth and warm, and finally just a dash of teal on her lids. Swish, swish, a face painted on by a child, but at least she no longer looked like Doctor Quinzel.

She walked into frame behind him. He was still stumbling through his disaster of a monologue that would have resulted in exactly zero applicants, but she placed her hands on his shoulders and her chin on his head, and he fell silent like one charmed. She raised a smirky eyebrow at the camera. “Hey there, suckers,” she purred. “The _point_ is that you want to win some money, right? And you’d put your life on the line to do it. You all sell your lives for money anyway – earning a living, earning the right to live. But you can win years of freedom if you offer up your throat. Admit it. You want to come on a game show, talk show, shit show, let us all see your true mettle. You think you can outwit Joker – don’t lie, you do. You lie awake at night planning the whole thing, how you’d win a fist fight, gun fight, mindfuck. Well, now’s your chance to prove it. Money or death, isn’t that what it’s all about? Apply to the number on the screen and come show us, come join the show. Who wants revenge? Who wants a little touch heaven on earth?” She pointed at the camera. “Will _you_ be the lucky winner?”

The cameraman made a pointed grimace at no one. “That’ll do it.”

Joker looked up at her with a stunned look on his face. His hands came up and grabbed her face, pulling her down for a greasy kiss. “You’re a class act, Harley. You're so good you deserve a present.” Leaning down to his bag again, he came back up with a box wrapped in newspapers. When she didn't immediately react, he lost patience. “Look.” He tore off the paper himself and opened the box.

She snorted. “Arthur?”

“What? You don’t want it?”

She shook her head, but with a smile, because seriously, this man. In the box lay a red fucking dildo. Merry Christmas in the middle of November?

Again, she waited too long, and he dipped his head, trademark cocktail of confidence and self-doubt. _Tell me I did good._

She smiled at the cameraman. “You can go.”


	3. Making Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Try again, don't give up!  
> Altogether, that and this  
> with all our tricks we're making Christmastime  
> This time, this time, it's ours!
> 
> ([Danny Elfman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyeHlZ_kPtU))

The studio was empty but for the gangly young guy charged with fixing the footage, some kind of technical stuff, she had no idea. He’d disappeared into the next room with his stutter and his too-big turtleneck, and Harley and Joker were alone on the stage, on what _would_ be a stage when all the rats where done with it. She caught her reflection in the glass wall that would feature a fake skyline, and something about the low light and Joker’s pale face when he came up behind her, hands settling on her hips, made her shiver. In the makeshift mirror, he rested his chin on her shoulder.

“You know you’re obsessed with your cock, right?” she said, holding up her present.

His chin shifted and dug into her collarbone as he smiled – the smile she dreaded, the smile that sent her heart on a bungy line. “You always think you know everything, Harley,” he honey-dripped into her ear.

Fighting down another goddamn shiver, she said, “It’s not a bad place to start.”

“Is it a bad place to end up?”

She was about to answer something flippant, but closed her mouth again. His grin widened, grinding into her shoulder, smearing it white. “That’s my girl.”

“The meek and quiet wife?”

He snorted. “The carte blanche.”

She raised an eyebrow at his reflection. _Carte blanche_. And that from a man who wrote words like _obzervashins_ in that fucking journal of his.

But she could never be a blank slate. Too many thinky-thoughts for that. Too much history. “So when do I get to use my present?” she muttered, because why hadn’t he already offered to use it on her?

Joker trailed a red, greasy path up her throat. “When you’ve figured out what to use it _for_ ,” he murmured.

“The jury is still out on that one?”

He bit her ear. “You can be boring if you like.” Then he drew back, and his eyes widened in the glass, a pantomime of surprise. “What, you thought you were going to get to play with your new toy at _once_? _No_ , no, no, no, Harley, we’re still working. The video has to be edited and shown before tonight.”

She turned in his embrace. “Edited? What’s to edit? It’s one scene.”

He made an impatient face. “There’s other footage to splice in. Got to catch their attention.”

“Other… footage?”

He dipped his head in a canary-chomping grin. “I thought I’d jog people’s memory.”

“About…”

He sighed dramatically. “My curriculum vitae, Harley. The hospital. The subway. All the highlights, what the fuck do you think?”

“Oh.” She glanced at the half-open door where a slice of lamplight spilled out. “Won’t that take a while?”

“Not if he values his sordid little life.”

She couldn’t stop a chuckle. “You’re so evil.”

“Aw, baby. So are you. And I want this show to be yours as well.”

She averted her eyes. “We’ll see.”

He pulled her closer with one arm and took her hand. Lacing their fingers, he held it up foxtrot style. “You’d better prepare. Just in case.”

“Just in case,” she whispered and closed her eyes as he started moving. It felt like the first time they touched, and in a way it was, because every time they touched it was different. Her hips swayed, couldn’t deny the will of his body against hers, the way the silent music flowed from him into her. Her feet moved like the puppeteer wanted. _Honor it. Honor it like mad because tomorrow it may all be gone_.

“So how do we get this thing on TV?” she asked, softly softly, afraid to disturb the sacredness of the moment, the holiness of dancing in a deserted studio-to-be.

“That’s the fun part,” he whispered into her hair, chin brushing her neck, sending shivers of white down her arm and leg. His hair nestled into hers, that soft tangle of curls that made her want to kill. Her fingers itched to punch something, to throttle it. Desire so close to murder in her snarled delta of synapses.

But she hadn’t killed yet.

“You’re the talker, Harley,” he said. “This’ll be your chance to shine.”

She snorted, and a lock of his hair shifted, tickled her nose. “Yeah, ’cause you’re not a master of manipulation.”

He held her tighter, pressed all those sharp angles and tight muscle into her hungry flesh. “They’d recognize my face. Yours isn’t known yet.”

“ _Now_ you care about being recognized.”

“Would be a shame to be predictable.”

She smiled and rested her head against his, relaxed in his embrace as they swished around the room, avoiding cables and steps. A miracle of intuition, like roller-skating at the edge of a break-neck fall. And yet a hot fear gripped her stomach, like Fate grabbing her by the spleen and scrunching it. Something was wrong. Again. But this time it was wrong on an existential level. It coursed through her bones like minus 100 degrees. This show… it was a point of no return. The choice she’d made was hidden so far, a secret. No one knew the darkness she’d embraced. In the eyes of the world she wasn’t yet lost.

This show would change that.

“So what role do you play best?” came the question, bang on time. “If you have to fool people.”

She swallowed down her beating heart. “Flaky academic with bohemian flair, what you think?”

She felt his cheek bunch against her ear. “And why would a flaky bohemian academic have a reason to go to a TV station?”

“I don’t know. To be interviewed about the infamous Joker?”

He pulled away to look at her, fucking stars in his eyes. “Lord, if I could just break my own rules and fuck you with that thing right now.”

“You just want me to smell like sex on live air.”

He laughed. “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

She smothered a smile. “So… should I lie?”

“Lie?”

“Yes, to muddy the waters. Throw them off the scent.”

“No.” He looked sad that she’d suggest such a thing. “I’m sick of lying. That’s the whole point of this project, to set the record straight. Tell them exactly what you think. Give them all the details of your observations, throw your analysis out there. Hand them the gun to shoot me with.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because why else play the game?”

She hesitated. Silence fell between them. A vague unease spread in her bloodstream when she looked at him, as if he was fading, or moving away, falling out of reach. A strange illusion, he was just standing there. But she had the urge to grab him, hold him, never let go.

“It’s, uh, done,” came the mumble from behind them, and they turned to see the turtleneck guy looking jumpy and tired behind his glasses. “I made one with just the old footage and one with the new stuff spliced in.”

Joker got a strange look on his face, almost paternal – or was it? Some kind of sympathy. “Thank you, Jason. That’s all for today.” He turned to Harley again. “Part two of your duties. They have to play this after the interview.”

She nodded, even as the counterarguments were forming a neat line outside the HQ of her brain. “I get them to vet the safe one and then switch them out.”

He cocked his head, attuned as ever to her qualms. “Don't worry. You’ll figure it out.”

She shot him a sour smile. “Yeah. You know what, Arthur? That thing they always do in movies, where women flirt their way past barriers and get men to xerox classified information for them? Yeah, that’s the fucking _movies_ , okay? And it’s women with a certain ability to charm. Not people like me.”

“Like you?”

“Yeah. You know how many people I’ve charmed in my life?”

He shrugged in that infuriating way of his. “One?”

“Bingo. Because… I don’t even know. I signal such aggressive intellectualism that people don’t even see me as a sexual creature? The only woman in America not to have been catcalled _ever_. So if you think I’m going to bat my eyelashes at some geeky intern and Get The Thing Done, you can think again.”

Joker laughed. “Are you really this stupid? Harley…”

She wanted to punch him, but that had to wait. He was getting at something. Waiting for her to understand. “Oh… hang on. Flaky. I can look harmless. Not cute, but harmless. I do a perfect airhead, people don’t even notice me. And I can do clumsy. So I can… I can ask if they’ll let me have a look in the control room because I’d just love to see how it all works.”

Joker’s face brightened like the sun. “There you go. You really need to stop giving up before you’ve even tried. It’s a nasty habit. Now let’s fix that interview.”

***

“Doctor Quinzel? Welcome.” The woman shook her hand, fake smile taking up all the space in her face, leaving no room for humanity. “Come with me. You wanted to have a look at the control room, didn’t you? Follow me.”

Repeated instructions: great, she was already coming across as a dunce.

“This is it. This is where it all happens.” The woman smiled and smiled, as if to compete with the adverts playing on a screen in the corner: beer and battery bunnies mingling with white teeth and flowing hair, a swatch book of superficialities. She knew it was the magician’s distraction while the real stuff happened somewhere else, but even knowing, she couldn't look away.

The woman pointed at another screen where smoke billowed up from Arkham Hospital. “There’s your footage. They’re checking it right now.”

Harley stepped closer. “Can I look?” Given a curt nod, she leaned forward, feigning an interest in the levers and buttons. “And do you remove our cassette to insert something else you’re showing on the same broadcast?”

“Oh no, we have several of these, so this one will just be for your footage.”

“Ah. So it’ll stay in there until it’s time?”

“Yep.”

“How _interesting_.”

There were some glances exchanged, fucking perfect, she was the quintessential idiot. Time to unleash the klutz. Leaning a little too far forward, she caught herself with a hand on the display, and one finger found the eject button. The burning asylum disappeared from the screen and she gasped in dismay. “Oh my, I’m so sorry…” Sprawling on the machinery, open jacket concealing her hands, she pried the cassette from the slot and dropped it in the bag she held. Making a show of regaining her balance, she got out the other cassette and placed it in the slot. She straightened up in the same movement and pushed her hair from her face with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m _so_ sorry.”

“Fine, fine, just…” The guy at the desk waved her away and pushed the cassette in. She stopped breathing, but when the identical burning building appeared on the screen, he clicked stop and sighed. “It’s fine. We know it’s working. But perhaps…?” He gave the woman behind Harley a look.

“Oh, yes. Time to go to the dressing room, Doctor Quinzel.”

“Of course. Again, so sorry. I’m such a fool.”

She left the room to their rolling eyes and traipsed after the woman, down and down the corridors, a maze to make you mad, until she was let into another room with a big mirror and a desk. “We’ll come get you in ten minutes.”

“Thank you.”

The door closed, and she breathed out. First step, and now a pause. Her hands were trembling, the aftershock, oh God. She looked around, eyes adjusting to the weak light from the lightbulbs. Was this how Joker had felt when he was about to go on _Live with Murray Franklin_? She swallowed a hitchy laugh. It had turned out to be _Death with Murray Franklin_. Not so this time. She wasn’t here to kill anyone, just to create some buzz. Her area of expertise: whipping up emotions, prodding people’s lazy brains. Bursting their bubbles.

But how?

With a sigh, she sat in front of the mirror, but she had no interest in it. She knew what she looked like. That tedious Libra face and her hair in an untidy bun, she wanted nothing to do with it, it wasn’t her. It was practical because it fooled those idiots out there, but what the fuck? How could she have a soul as dark as a cave full of vampires, and nothing visible on the surface?

She opened her bag and took out her old notebook, the one she’d abandoned for more structured planning. The book for truth that she never lied to. She leafed through it, saw her old scribbles, her drawings, the fearful ruminations of yesteryear. Joker, herself, nightmarish creatures and Jungian shadows. Her chest contracted. The truth. God, how she longed for truth. Was that what this show would be? _Set the record straight_. But there would be an audience. It was one thing to confess her deepest secrets to someone who was crazier than her, but to bare it all on national television?

She picked up a pen and started doodling. A few figures, people in masks, people pulling them off. Spinning wheels, Lady Luck with hearts on her sleeve and diamonds in her hair, club in her hand and confidence in spades. Her pen flew over the page, turned drawings into words, words into sentences. They were entering the big game now. The big game, the shit show of public discourse. _A crap game with a twist, the Devil doesn’t care. He doesn’t even see you, just the game, the game, the game. Over the hills and far away his country lies, all gold, all dead. All he knows is winning. So he plays you, and you lose. Every time. There’s not a hope in hell the game will ever change. He rigged it, don’t you see? He’s the master and the player, he’s the fucking house, and the house always wins_.

Hands unsteady and damp, she turned the page, let loose. She had no idea what she wrote, just that it needed out, out, out. Truths were gathering, burning, erupting. She feared them, and they had to be said. _The candle burns down as you play deep into the night. Shadows creep up the walls to watch you come undone. They slaver in delight at your sweaty brow, they hang over your shoulder and leer at the cards you’ve been dealt. Shivers run down your spine and you don’t understand why. It’s them, it’s the shadows. They want you to fall. They want to see you crumble. And yet you play on, because what else is there? This is what you have to do, and the devil grins, because he has the upper hand, always the upper hand. When will you stop playing by his rules? When will you find a way to end this game? Is there a way out of here that you’ve never seen because you’ve been so busy playing this crap, crap game?_

She closed her eyes as she wrote, venturing into the vast unknown. _The devil – who is the devil?_ _They’d have you think it’s him. The one you chose, because with blood and brains and time on his hands, who else can he be? He’s Satan incarnate, a painter of chaos, the ultimate disruptor. But you know different. The devil is bigger than a man. The devil is God. The biggest prank he ever pulled: to blind the world with phony virtue. Work work work, earn your keep, don’t think, don’t ever fucking think a single fucking thought – in fact, here, have an ideology, cut and dry, prêt à porter. Lull, lull, go to sleep, go to work, go to hell._

 __She opened her eyes. Fuck. It was the world. She was still afraid of the world. Her father, Fiona, all those people. There were myriads who knew her. Myriads to see her truth when they blasted it out on pitiless prime time. She knew her path, it had never changed. It was just her feeble fucking heart that still feared its own shadow.

There was a knock on the door. “Time to go on.”

***

“So, Doctor Quinzel.” The host squirmed his mouth into a smile for the camera, a smile for the masses. “Are you still a doctor? You’re not at the university anymore, are you?”

The spotlight on her. A practice run for the real thing. Lenses reflecting her terrified face, people in the darkness pointing at her. “Uh,” she stumbled on the first syllable, “no, no, I’m back to clinical work.” The red light leered at her, the shadows… She swallowed and blinked, turned her eyes back on the host, _just concentrate_. “But the title… is a title, it doesn’t go away.” Nice, teeth. The mannerisms of a lifetime, impossible to erase. _Just get through this_. “Not that it matters, it’s just a word.”

“Of course it matters,” the host said. “It lends a certain weight to your words. “So I understand you’ve had contact with the murdering madman we know as Joker?”

 _Swallow, even though it’s dry as the desert_. She was here to plug the show, not engage in meaningless debates. “Yes.”

The host waited a split second – oh, she should have gone on? Smiling, ever smiling, he urged, “You’ve interviewed him and lived to tell the tale?”

She couldn’t stop a chuckle. “Obviously.”

“That’s amazing. So brave of you.” Fake, slithery smooth talk. “But where is he? Can you tell us? Don’t you have an obligation to tell the police?”

She shifted in her seat, lactic acid in her muscles, _calm down,_ _this is not a fight_. The cameras seemed to loom closer, stare at her. Behind that convex gleaming surface lay the world, the eyes of millions, all turned to her. All hanging on her next words. “Oh, I will.” She nodded eagerly, back to square one, back to people-pleasing, _please don’t hurt me_. “But I wanted to interview him in a real life setting before they put him back behind bars. Scientist’s instincts, you know.” She managed a sweet smile: a confusing contrast. Girlish smile and science? She could see it founder on the cogs and wheels of the host’s machine-like brain.

“So what’s he like? Can you even talk to him, reason with him?”

She didn’t laugh, only inside. “From time to time.”

“From time to time? How long have you been with him?”

She looked up. _Been with?_ “Oh… at first it was phone interviews. He called me, wanted to talk to me. Wanted the attention, you know.”

“I see.” The host frowned briefly, this wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. But what did he want? She answered his questions, didn’t she? “I’m curious… is it even possible to have a normal conversation with him, to understand him? Hasn’t he gone full… _werewolf_?” Air quotes, a mocking smile.

Her instincts whispered to her, _agree and be pleasant_ , but she met his gaze and asked instead, “What do you mean?”

“Well, when he was incarcerated he was a full-blown lunatic, no? So how exactly do you navigate a conversation like that? I have no doubts that you can, being a psychologist with a PhD and all, but if you’d be so kind as to describe it to our viewers, who have less experience with psychopaths.”

Her face twitched. “Well…” _Do or die, Harley. Bare it all_. “I’m afraid you operate from a false assumption. That we’re static as human beings. That development is one-way and that you can never go back.”

“Oh?” Not happy to be put in his place, oh fuck, she was a little girl again. She didn’t want daddy to be upset. He got so _angry_. Never one to use his fists, but the whole room changed when his adrenaline ran high, _please don’t scream_.

“Yeah, I mean…” She looked down, there were hands in her lap, they were hers. The studio lights reflected off them brightly, they were wet. “We… uh…” She’d lost her train of thought. She had no idea where she was.

“So you mean we can go back, is that it? That we… regress?”

She breathed in. _Back on track_. “Sure, we can regress too, but that’s something different. What I mean is… There’s this myth. That life is a series of chapters that push the plot forward and ends with a final epiphany, maturity if you like. That there’s a final destination and we choose paths along the way to get there. That there’s a right road and a wrong road, and if we keep on the straight and narrow we’ll get our prize.”

“Well, yes, that’s what I’ve been taught.” The host laughed, an edge to his voice. “But according to you, that’s not the case.”

Oh, the subtle stress on ‘you’. She grinned wider, more sweetly. _Tread the minefield, get to the other side_. “No. Have you never encountered an old problem that you thought was solved once and for all, but it turns out it wasn’t?”

The host chuckled. “Well, I do encounter my ex-wife now and again.”

 _Indulgent smile, we’re all friends here_. “I mean problems _in you_ ,” she explained, patience personified, _you can do this_. “Fears and inhibitions and destructive behavior.”

“Uh, well…”

“I know we like to think we can close the doors behind us, but we can’t. They’re not even behind us, they’re not even doors. We like to say we’ve understood something once and for all. But life keeps tossing these lessons in our path again and again. It’s the same thing over and over, and the things we learn come back in a new form and we have to learn it all over again.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Look. Think of movies, or books. They depict a character’s journey from ignorance to enlightenment, from immaturity to maturity, and there’s an ending and we feel like things are done and dusted. Happily ever after, all that. But life goes on, and the same story will happen again. The hero will descend into the cave countless times, not just once. We don’t make one decision and that’s it, we solved it. Five years down the road we’ve fallen into complacency and need another lesson.”

“That sounds bleak.”

“Maybe it does. But what if we’re born with a template, a life lesson to be learned again and again, and each chapter of our life is a separate movie where we win or lose? We learn the lesson, but then we forget, and it’s time for another movie. If your fatal flaw is fear of other people, that doesn’t just go away. You may vanquish it from time to time, but the same pattern will emerge again, because that’s your story. You were born with it and you were taught it in your formative years, and it’s your life’s struggle, to handle the fall-out of that. Of course go ahead and celebrate your victories, but don’t think you’ve killed the dragon once and for all, because it’s your dragon. You’re mated for life.”

“Well.” The host cleared his throat. “Thank you for the philosophy lesson, Doctor Quinzel, but what does all this have to do with Joker?”

For a moment, she had no idea. She’d gone off on a tangent, and now she was lost in the woods. But then there was a slice of light, spilling into the darkness of her mind. “He may have ‘gone full werewolf’ as you put it, but remember, werewolves change back again. He can go mad and then go sane again. He can learn to stand up for himself and then get knocked down, and it’ll be like it never happened, he’s back on that dirty floor and he’ll have to go through the whole thing all over again. The story is stuck on repeat.”

“I see,” but he didn’t see, not at all. He was an idiot, just like everyone else.

She sighed. “There’s a way to see all this for yourself. And maybe even take part in it.”

“See what?”

“What he’s become, what he can be, what he is, what he was.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

She threw a glance at the shadows beyond the cameras. Somewhere over there was a door, and it was time to find it. “You have some footage to show, don’t you?”

“Oh well, if you’re going to tell me how to do my job…” The host chuckled sharply. “Sure, yeah, we can roll it. What is it we’re about to see?”

“The truth.”

“My, my, that’s no small order. Okay, put it on.”

She let a second pass, let the scene shift to the hospital. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “I really need to go to the bathroom.” Before the host had reacted, she flew up from the chair and left the spotlight. Stepping over cables in the darkness beyond the stage, she fumbled for the exit as the footage flickered over the screens. The burning building, the subway CCTV. A cornucopia of exploits, a background to their sinister invitation. Just as she reached the door, Joker’s face appeared onscreen, so brightly lit it tipped over into blindness. His tears like diamonds, clinging to his lashes and falling with a sigh. She wanted to touch that face, to merge with it, but she couldn’t stay to watch. Quickly, quickly, down the corridor, a man with a folder stepping aside as she dashed towards the stairs.

Time for the next chapter.


	4. The court of the crimson king

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pattern juggler lifts his hand  
> The orchestra begin  
> As slowly turns the grinding wheel  
> In the court of the crimson king
> 
> ([King Crimson](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvCmtHDDuu0))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I'm _so_ not sure about this, but this is how it wanted to come out. Sorry if it's repetitive and aimless, maybe I'm losing my comedy... :-/

The lights and the screens and the orchestra were in place. People were swarming, concentrated, a collective buzz of business. Cables crisscrossed the floor, spectators were gathering, everything was a thrill of anticipation.

And then there was him. Alone in front of a mirror, a whole team fussing over him. Alone, even as they smoothed out his hair and plumped it up where needed, removed makeup smears and straightened his collar. Making him look like the prince he was. It pinched Harley’s heart to see him so unattainable, so locked in his tower with dragons all around. His face in the mirror a reflection of the void.

And her? She was a shadow in the corner, just feeding on the atmosphere. Writing and pretending to write, trying to sketch it but nothing came.

She was scared. Something would go wrong. _She_ would go wrong. She was about to be exposed, cut open on the air. A bright light would shine into the cavity where her heart should be, her cracked and hollow chest, ugly ribs protruding. She shivered, imagining Fiona seeing the show, or her old supervisor. Her dad. Her sister. Nobody had ever known her, but now they would. They’d wonder who the fuck they’d had under their roof. They’d realize the act she’d pulled off her entire life.

Because yeah, they’d watch. There wasn’t a chance in hell they wouldn’t. Joker had convinced her to go with him to the high street a few days ago – probably the last time they could do so – and they’d stopped in front of a shop window full of TV sets. In between adverts, people had discussed their coming show on mute behind the glass. Even the police commissioner had come on, probably to dissuade people from applying. At least he’d looked annoyed and used his index finger a lot, so he was clearly not a fan.

Joker had grinned. _This will have the opposite effect_.

And it had. Their message had reached millions thanks to the uproar, had drawn all the psychos out of the woodwork. They’d had to turn them away in droves. Only gold-edged invitations to the lucky few.

“Harley-darling.” Joker rose from his chair, and his assistants fell away like leaves. He sashayed up to her, only the hairdresser trailing behind, spraying his emerald locks. “Nervous?”

 _Holy fuck, you’re hot_. “It’s just…” She gestured with her pointless notebook. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

His eyes snagged on the book, and he grabbed it and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he cocked his head with a pointed smile.

“I know,” she groaned.

He threw his hands up. “How many _times_ , Harley?”

She watched the floor, embarrassed and annoyed. She knew there was no point trying to second-guess this, but her acid pulse didn’t care. It corroded where it went, screaming for assurances, for guarantees.

With a sigh, Joker raised his hand – and there was a gun in it, of course there fucking was. The hairdresser stepped back but didn’t run. By now they all knew what they were in for, which was that they could never ever know what they were in for. Smiling, he caressed Harley’s cheek with the gun. Where the metal coolness slid over her skin, it drew her fever out. “ _So what_ if you show them your true face and they hate you? Haven’t they always hated you? And if they haven’t, they’ve actually liked someone who wasn’t you, and how is that better?”

“You don’t understand.”

He placed the barrel against her temple, and even as she closed her eyes and relaxed, she could feel the eyes of strangers widen, hearts quickening in fear because they didn’t understand. “It’s the one thing you can depend on me to do,” Joker whispered. “Haven’t you tried and failed to fit in, and they’ve derided the version of you that you only played because they told you to? Fuck that, Harley. It’s better to be hated for who you are than for someone you’re not.”

“I know,” she said again, but the words were hollow.

“Two minutes,” a guy with a clipboard said as he passed them – Jason, she realized, what, was he a producer now? – and it had the effect of sending all the minions scurrying faster. Only Joker grew calmer. He was the eye of the hurricane, and she was tethered to him like a pole at the center of a merry-go-round. The quiet kernel of chaos. She wanted to stop time. The world was opening up tonight, and she didn’t want it. She was content in a burrow with her partner in madness, she didn’t need the lights and the crew and the bullshit.

But what was the use of arguing when she was living with a fucking dachshund?

“One minute.”

The gun trailed down her cheek and slipped away, and God she missed it already. “Positions,” he whispered, and then he walked away. Squared shoulders beneath the red, such power and presence, she wished she could just sit in the audience and get lost in the vision of him. But no, she was his sidekick, which meant stay by his side. Play her part. Be what the situation called for, when the situation was anything but clear.

She shadowed him behind the curtain, but he gestured at her to step up beside him. _They don’t want me_ , she mouthed at him, but he looked away before she’d even finished. _Obey the fucking dachshund_. The orchestra started playing, the dramatic first bars of Beethoven’s fifth, _fate comes knocking_ , and something about it felt dizzyingly déjà vu. She’d only seen Murray’s show from the other side of that curtain, from the safety of a screen and hindsight, and now she was standing here with the very man.

As if in answer, he turned his white and red smile on her, true happiness beneath the paint, and it twisted her stomach. She couldn’t breathe, she wanted to explode into stars with him.

And that’s what she was about to do.

The curtain lifted, and they stepped out into the roar of planned applause. The lights hit them, hot and hard, and Joker’s arm around her waist was the only thing that was real. Trumpets and trombones blared into her left ear and the other filled with sea surf. The floor was uneven beneath her feet.

“Gotham!” Joker said as the music faded, and held out his arms for a citywide hug. “And the rest of the country, of course, but you’re just a bonus. Sorry, I’m only being honest. My true love is Gotham.” He grinned, and his voice went soft and childish. “Welcome to _my show_.”

Moving with exaggerated confidence, he took his seat behind the desk, and Harley… didn’t know what to do, so she stood behind him. Sweating, trembling, an awkward blob of flesh in the limelight.

“Now listen. I’m going to tell three jokes, and you can only laugh at the one that’s funny.” Joker gave the audience a cheeky look as he raised the gun and pointed it at them, barrel taking aim into the darkness. There was a moment of whispers, of breaths held, and then he laughed. “You missed it. That was the first joke, and it was also the funny one, so you blew it. I should shoot the lot of you.” He closed one eye and held the gun level with the other. A moment passed, another… and then he leaned back in the chair and rolled his eyes. “Come _on_. That was the second joke! Funny?” He raised an eyebrow at them and cupped an ear. “Yeah?”

A few titters, bodies shifting in their seats.

“Yeah.” He sniggered. “Quite funny. I agree. But you know what’s fucking hilarious? This.” He pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger. A scream tore through Harley’s throat, but it clicked, the gun fucking clicked, wasn’t it loaded? Sweat and prickles splayed her open, fucking ravaged her. He was alive. He was alive. And _laughing_. “Lady Luck is on my side, it seems,” he said. “Or not, depending on your perspective. But more importantly, was it funny?”

Harley’s breath came out in choked giggles, her chest jerking and deflating like a bellows. Joker blinked up at her, baffled smile pulling at his lips. “Yeah? My Lady Luck thinks it was funny. I guess that settles it. So laugh, for fuck’s sake!” The applause sign switched on, and the audience erupted in confused cheers. Joker grinned at them, fidgeting like someone on their birthday, because what do you do with yourself when they sing? “Alright, alright, shut up. Haven’t got all night. It’s time for our first guest _and_ our first game, the Wheel of Fortune.”

The music exploded in cheery fireworks and the audience clapped, because what else could they do? They’d signed up for chaos and this was what it looked like. Amid the cacophony, Harley leaned down and spoke in his ear, her voice fragile like glass. “You could have killed yourself.”

She wanted him to laugh and say _it’s empty, stupid_ , but instead he looked up at her with stars in his eyes. “Yes. That will always be the deal. You can’t save me, Harley.”

“And I can’t… I can’t…” She choked on the shards in her throat. “I can’t kill anyone. Not even for you.”

He frowned. “Why should you?”

“Because…” She gestured at the stage, the ultimate test, could she go through with whatever was happening here?

“Because _I’ve_ killed people?” Joker spread his hands. “What stupid kind of reason is that? I thought you were an independent thinker. Find your own way.”

“But…” She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to… to…

He grabbed her head and bored his eyes into her. “You can’t control it. You can’t control _anything_. Not me, not yourself, not other people. The only thing you can do is to react in the moment. Don’t you know what your thing is, Harley? You deal your own kind of death, remember?” In his eyes, the ghost of _that night_. “Now pull yourself together. It’s time to shine.”

The lights seemed to brighten and the music swelled as a man was led onto the stage. She turned, and it was a man she recognized – holy hell, it was her old supervisor. Her throat closed on the name. “There’s no way he applied,” she croaked.

Joker shrugged.

“But… why…? Why him?”

Joker raised an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same thing. Why? Why do you hate him so much? What did he ever do to you?”

“I…”

“You have questions you want to ask him. Well, now’s your chance.” Before she could reply, before so much as a coherent thought could form, Joker got up and extended his hand with a winning smile. “Welcome, Professor. Such an honor to have you on the show.”

Jonathan came forward with a confident smirk, not unlike Joker’s own. “Thank you.” He took the offered hand and shook it too hard, she could see it. “Pleasure’s all mine.”

 _Jesus_. He really was here of his own accord, then. Harley could have sworn he’d been kidnapped, but here he was, leering at her with his complete absence of fear, his narcissistic belief that he would always win. “What are you doing here?” she whispered as he leaned past Joker to grab her hand.

“Long time no see, Doctor Quinzel.” He crushed her fingers. “I could ask the same thing, what are _you_ doing here? No, wait, I know the answer to that.” He grinned into the spotlights, in his element. She remembered being his student, the unadulterated glee when someone asked a stupid question, the care he took in dismantling their erroneous beliefs. Like dissecting a small amphibian, first make a cut, then peel the skin back…

 _Like me. What I would be like if I took off my mask_.

“So, Professor…” Joker began, but was waved off.

“Look, with all due respect, you’re a lunatic.” Jonathan sat in the chair closest to the desk. “And I don’t argue with lunatics.”

Harley snorted. “What do you call the department of psychology?”

Jonathan looked up at her. “A beacon of light in this dark world?”

There was an uncertain murmur of laughter from the audience.

“Oh.” She nodded in mock pensiveness. “How poetic. But I can tell you something else it is. My _stipulative_ definition.” She grinned suddenly. “You remember teaching me that? That I could say any old bullshit, call a spade a fucking rake as long as I defended it with that phrase? Well, my stipulative definition is this: the department of psychology is a playground for word fetishists. A place to set the specific rules that make you win, just like every other place. You see? It’s just a random collection of rules, everywhere. Doesn’t matter if it’s football or politics or the dinner table. Let’s pretend X, Y, and Z are true, because if they are, I’m right and you’re wrong.”

Jonathan regarded her coolly. “Science is open to questioning. No one pretends to know the ultimate truth.”

“No one?”

“I’m just stating a fact as I see it in a specific context and a specific time. It’s up to you to contradict it – using sound methods, of course.”

Meaning, _leave your crazy intuition out of it_. She sighed. There was no winning over this man, she knew that. She’d tried often enough. Trying again on a stage made no difference, except that a million people would see her fail.

“There are other ways of knowing the world,” she still muttered, not sure she wanted the microphones to pick it up. She was riding that intuitive wave right now, with no idea where she would end up. “Ways unlinked to your neat little boxes. Ways that say _what if_.” She stopped, feeling somehow painted into a corner. She didn’t want to abandon logic, that wasn’t it. She just needed the logic to apply to _her_ for once. Because if everything in a system made sense but she had no place in it, how could the system be true? “I’m the black swan.”

Jonathan leaned forward in a parody of interest. “Excuse me?”

She breathed in. “You know, the classic example to illustrate how yesterday’s knowledge has to be revised? That if the prevailing theory is that all swans are white, when you find one black swan, the theory is proved wrong.”

“And you feel like a black swan?” Jonathan chuckled. “That’s why you’ve defected, because you’re such a unique human being that nothing but a life on the edge will suffice? Maybe you don’t see yourself so clearly, Harleen. Maybe you shouldn’t indulge in _autoethnography_.”

 _Ouch._ She wanted to punch him. “So I’ll use someone else,” she snapped. “I’ll use Joker as an example. If everything in the world is perfect and runs perfectly, but he can step outside of that and do something else, _be_ something else… doesn’t that mean the system isn’t perfect after all? If even one single human being doesn’t fit the mold, the mold must be wrong. At least it’s proof of existence, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Maybe it’s proof of existence, but that doesn’t mean it _should_ exist. Just because there are madmen and freaks out there doesn’t mean we should condone them.”

“See, but that’s your personal opinion.” She stepped out from behind the desk, warming to the argument now. The audience’s eyes on her no longer felt uncomfortable. “And people are prepared to believe you because of your title, your credentials. You can say any old bullshit and people will buy it because you’re a professor. But I used to have those credentials too. Now I don’t. I still have the same brain, I’m the same person, but my words no longer mean anything because I don’t have the scenery to prop them up. So it’s not the ideas themselves that have value, but the person expressing them.”

it was basic psychological fodder, and he should know it. In fact she knew he did, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of saying so. “Science is impersonal,” he said dismissively. “That’s its big strength. It doesn’t matter who says something as long as they follow the rules. A truth can come from whoever, as long as they play–”

“By the rules, I know. Okay. Say Joker found a truth. Okay? Let’s entertain the notion, he uncovers something real, something that resonates. Not just his own truth, but something that makes a thousand hearts beat faster because it’s just so goddamn true, and no one ever said it before. A paradigm shift. A seismic event. But you wouldn’t _let_ it be true, because it’s him. He’s too dangerous. You wouldn’t want to associate yourself with anything he believes in, even if it’s undeniable. He can say the earth is round and you’d disagree, and you know why? You _should_ know why, you’re a fucking psychologist. Because of cognitive dissonance.”

Ignoring his rolling eyes, she turned to the camera. “Time for a lesson. A little box of facts, bitesize and tolerable, okay? Just think of a person you despise, but who utters a truth you believe in. Many people can’t take that. It violates our most dearly enshrined belief, that someone we dislike can’t say anything we agree with. Because you don’t get to keep the categories pure. The dichotomy suffers, and we must uphold the dichotomy at all cost because what else do we have? It contaminates you to agree with them. To even talk to them. Like Jonathan said, he doesn’t argue with lunatics.”

“Harleen…”

“And yet wouldn’t it be wildly unrealistic that two people on this planet disagree on every conceivable point? Is it really a scenario you think can happen, that every single thought you have is different from Joker’s? Logic says no, but you don’t care about logic. You don’t want to go there. It’s important to keep the person we hate at arm’s length. So you decide the truth he’s uttered is false. It’s easier that way, because you don’t have to sift through the exact nuances of where you agree and not. You don’t have to say yes, I follow your reasoning up to this point, but this is where we part ways. You’d rather not share his road at all, because it’s just too much work.” She turned back to the professor. “And you’re supposed to be an academic.”

“ _Yes_ , I’m an academic,” he snapped, banging his fist on the desk, “a _true_ one, one who doesn’t give up and cross over to the dark side. I’ve even written a book about it, about how you’ve given up, Doctor Quinzel.”

She recoiled. “W… what?”

He gave a bitter smile. “I wrote a book about how a promising scientific mind can be hijacked by a charismatic cult leader. It hit the shelves yesterday.”

Her heart was hammering its way out of her chest. “You’re not here to plug a book of lies,” she said. “You’re here to play _our_ game.” She ran over to the wheel of fortune and gave it a hard shove. It spun and spun, click-click-click on the little pegs, and stopped on Philosophy 700. She hacked a laugh. “Well, ain’t this your lucky day, Professor!”

He looked around, sudden suspicion in his eyes. “What does that mean? I win 700 dollars if I answer a philosophy question and I get shot if I don’t?”

Joker smiled. “Sort of. And here’s the question: why is it that I’m the scum of the earth while other people kill and maim and abuse and destroy much more than I do? How come it’s fine to sell food that shortens people’s lives, to annihilate whole populations for turf, to destroy farmland to build a mall, or force people to work dangerous jobs, but it’s a crime to shoot someone in self-defense?”

Jonathan stared at him for a moment. “Self-defense? You shot Murray Franklin in self-defense?”

A smirk. “Yes.” His voice went up in pitch. “He was hurting my _ego_.”

“Well, I know everyone can see _that_ for what it is.” Jonathan turned to the audience, a seasoned performer who was always right. “A madman’s rationalization.”

“So it’s the rationalization that decides if it’s a crime.”

“Of course it is!”

Joker’s eyes widened in childish glee. “You’d get along very well with Batman, I can tell you that.” He chuckled, and Jonathan looked momentarily confused. “So anyway, if I have a good enough reason to shoot you, it’s not a crime?”

The professor hesitated. “Look… you can’t go around killing people just because you don’t like them. That’s not how civilization works. That’s why we have courts of law to settle things. With _words_.”

Joker made a sweeping gesture at the stage and the audience as if to say _duh_.

Jonathan scoffed. “ _This_ … is not a court of law.”

Joker leaned over and theatre-whispered, “It _is_.”

“You don’t get to decide the rules of when it’s okay to kill someone. That’s a collective human decision.”

“The rules again.” Harley sighed. She was beginning to feel like a broken record, but then the people watching TV had never heard their reasoning before. “So why is it that your rules count and ours don’t? Can anyone answer that? Can you?”

“I just told you,” Jonathan said, growing irritated now. “It’s basic democracy, for God’s sake.”

“So if we gathered enough people to agree with _our_ rules, that would be just fine with you?”

Jonathan hesitated, and Joker cut in, “I repeat, what have I done that’s so very bad? I just killed people who would have killed me. So to speak.” He giggled at the audience, and there was a faltering response. “But I never sold drugs that ruined the lives of hundreds, and I never gave an order to drop a bomb.”

“You sabotaged a factory so people lost their medication,” Jonathan said. “What if they kill themselves?”

Joker clapped his hands and laughed. “Perfect answer! So you _can_ blame someone else when people kill themselves? Interesting.”

“You know what his problem is?” Harley muttered. “I’ll tell you. It’s standing up for yourself. That’s the only thing that separates you from the herd. Actually standing up to your own personal bullies. We can’t have that. You need a veneer of holiness, a Cause. We can have maniacs going berserk in a war and we can have the state dealing out impersonal punishment and we can have collateral damage when an arrest is made, but we can’t have a nobody finally taking revenge. That’s obscene. It’s too real, and too personal. Icky as fuck.”

Jonathan shook his head. “What if everyone acted like you? You should act in a way that you can elevate to universal law.”

“Wait a minute.” Harley leaned on the desk and crossed her arms. “Did I just hear you refer to Cunt?”

The audience gasped, and Jonathan frowned. So offended. “What?”

“Sorry, Kant.” She shrugged at the camera, a Jokeresque move that felt alien and familiar at once. “Because if you are, I can tell you right now I don’t buy it. How can any act be elevated to universal law? What if everyone in the city baked a pie and gave it to the grieving widow? It would become a problem, not a consolation. What if everyone refrained from criticizing a badly written text? No one would learn. Or the opposite, what if everyone decided that to be kind you should criticize and help people grow? The person would be crushed. Isn’t the point that we’re different, and that we contribute different things? How can one action be a moral template for everyone, when we all value different things and need a variety of responses to retain a sense of balance?”

“We’re not talking about pies though, we’re talking about murder.”

“So the categorical imperative only applies to what you want it to apply to?” She paused a beat to relish his annoyed expression. “Okay. I can work with that. So is murder never okay?”

“No.”

She walked over and spun the wheel again, and it stopped on Geopolitics 500. She smiled. “What about war?”

Jonathan rolled his eyes, as if he’d been over this a thousand times with generation after generation of students. “War isn’t murder. That’s why it’s called war and not, you know, murder.”

“No? So what is it? It involves killing people, doesn’t it?”

“According to very strict rules.”

“You don’t think other kinds of murder operate on genre-specific rules? We can ask the expert, he’s right he–”

“War is _organized_.”

“Organized murder.”

“It’s _not murder_.”

Harley laughed again. “Because of semantics. But the person is still dead. You think they care about your linguistic distinctions?”

Jonathan’s face contorted, _good_ , he was losing his cool. “Well, do you want to be murdered on the street, going about your daily life? In war, you know what’s going on and can flee, but when you’re shot on the street, you had no warning.”

She nodded. “So if the murderer gives you a head start, it’s okay? By your own definition then…” She smiled and straightened up. “This is a war. Us against you. And you’re hereby given a minute to try to get out of here.”

It took a moment for it to register. His face stiffened in dismayed idiocy, and his hands flew up to the armrests, about to catapult him out of the chair.

“Yes, I mean it,” Harley said. “Tick-tock.”

He flew up and ran towards the audience, realized that the door was blocked by a guard, and stopped short. He turned and looked for the way to the dressing room, but Joker had left his desk and was casually leaning on the doorframe, examining his nails.

“You’ve blocked the exits!”

“Oh… you hadn’t heard? In war, the exits are also blocked. All those pesky nationalistic rules about borders and passports and things meaning things only within a geographical area, you know?” She made a rueful face. “But you did get a head start. Thirty-five seconds. What’s the plan, genius? Bombers are incoming.” She chuckled. “And just as in war, it’s nothing personal. Just a squabble over turf. And this turf… is ours.”

He crouched as if to lunge, and she took a step back, glanced at Joker. He gripped the gun tighter, prepared.

“You can still win,” she said. “If you have an argument I can buy. You can pay for your freedom with logic. Fifteen seconds.”

Jonathan gaped at her, and then fell to his knees, hands clasped in prayer.

“Oh for f…” Joker pulled the trigger.

Click.

For a moment she thought it had blasted a red path through that stupid head. For a moment she actually thought they’d won. But Jonathan’s lips pulled apart in a ghoulish grin – as if he was suddenly _enjoying_ it. “Nice try, Doctor.”

“Oh well. Sorry to ruin your dinners, folks, but Lady Luck was with our first guest tonight.” Joker threw out a hand towards Jonathan. “Professor Crane, y’all! He did good, didn’t he? Considering.” He glanced at the wings, and two men came out to escort the professor off the premises. “And now, without further ado, let’s welcome our next guest, who also comes from the world of academia. Please give a big hand for Professor emeritus Francis Quinzel!”


	5. High hopes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us  
> To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side  
> Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again  
> Dragged by the force of some inner tide
> 
> ([Pink Floyd](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jMlFXouPk8))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Down the rabbit hole we go. This is where it turns dark.

Harley’s head jerked up. She hadn’t even had a chance to recover from the non-victory against Jonathan, and now suddenly there he was, the man who’d loomed so large over her childhood and who was now a fading wisp of grey. In the twilight of his life, he was protected by growing frailty. Whatever he’d done, whatever enemies he’d created in his heyday, no one could get at him now.

Everything in her rose to the surface. A sound – there was a sound that rattled the windows of her soul. Awake in an instant, from deep sleep, Marianer tomb deep to sky high, soaring and shrieking like fireworks. Pulse an arrow of ice through her heart. Joker had let him come here. And he had decided to come.

It was too much.

The audience fell quiet. Her father stood motionless halfway to the chair. Joker had turned and stood watching him with his hands resting on his hips, and Harleen… She briefly closed her eyes. She’d come nowhere. All the lies she’d told herself, they were fluff and candy floss. Here he stood now, the man who decided everything. Who put the full stop in every sentence.

“War?” was the first thing out of his mouth, and time started rolling again in a soundless exhalation. “Really, Harleen. Is that the best you can do?” He walked over to the chair, confident in his decrepitude, because who would point a gun at a man on the brink of death? One puff and his frame would crack. Where was the fun in that? “Bringing up war in a discussion of ethics, that’s high school level arguing,” he said as he sat. “It smacks of desperation. I would have expected more from you.”

“I’m not desperate,” she murmured, but it was too low for anyone to hear - or at least for anyone but Joker, who glanced at her with face unreadable under the paint. Her chest ached. She was failing him in real time. This test was too hard.

“This man, Harleen?” Her father gestured at Joker. “Yes, he has his reasons for being who he is. He even has a place in civilized society. As an example. A cautionary tale. That’s why they write about him in the papers, and that’s why I think you once approached him – to show the world what can go wrong if we don’t nip it in the bud. Wasn’t that what you wanted to do?”

She lowered her head in place of a nod.

“But to end up taking his side? To succumb to the naïve notion that a woman’s love will heal him? Harleen, you’re missing the point.”

_The point? As in the single, all-encompassing, fundamentalist fucking point? What if there’s more than one point? What if a painting has more than one meaning? How can I choose one single truth and stay with it for a lifetime?_

__But she couldn’t utter a word. She couldn’t even get at the line of reasoning, it was hovering just out of reach, and all she could hear was her father’s voice making sense, deciding what the sense even was, erecting the boundaries within which it was okay to think. _This is the matrix, honey. Anything outside that has no bearing_. She wanted to leave the stage, the building, the world. Everything was meaningless. You could run a million miles and not get anywhere, so what was the point of running?

“Time for a new game,” Joker said, saving her from the silence of total regression. “How about the Pied Piper? The goal of this game is to lure the rats out of hiding.” He took his seat behind the desk. “And shoot them.”

She glanced at the bat that lay by Joker's foot, beneath the desk. Did her father see? Did he guess that it was hers, but that she'd never fully grasped it?

“You’re seriously planning to shoot me?” he asked softly.

Joker shrugged. “No. No plans. Only one bullet in this thing, but it has someone’s name on it. Maybe mine. Maybe yours.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m dying anyway. I’m here to save my daughter if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Ah, no, you don’t get to play the cancer card,” Joker said, tutting and wagging his index finger in the old man’s face.

“It’s not cancer. And anyway it doesn’t matter. I'm over 75. Statistically, I’m living on borrowed time. So let’s not get hung up on my death, that’s beside the point.”

_That’s not the point either? So what is the fucking point? Huh?_

__She looked at the two of them, at the stoic, elderly gentleman and the grossly made up trickster making everything into a joke, and her brain couldn’t handle it. They were both asking her for the same thing, and she couldn’t give it to them. Neither of them. She was no one, in no man’s land. It had been easy as long as she’d hidden from the world, but now she was in the spotlight, and the fork in the path was a snake’s tongue lashing. Poisonous bite awaiting her whether she chose right or left or not at all. There was no escaping this serpent.

“Okay, forget war,” she said, arms hanging limp. The two men looked up at her. “Let’s take work.” She felt weak, tired, but she knew what to ask. Knew the game that needed to be played. The Pied Piper. Draw the rats out, all of them. “One thousand dollars to answer a question under pain of death.” She breathed shallowly, she wasn’t really there anymore. “Sounds about right. Sounds like a lot of jobs. Sounds like most of my life.”

Her father sighed, genuine regret in his voice as he said, “You have such a dramatic view of everything. Can’t you just take life for what it is? It’s not that serious.”

Joker laughed. “A man after my own heart.”

Ignoring him, her father gave her a stern look. “You like to take on airs. You like to pretend you didn’t have to study to pass any tests in school. You like to feign sickness to get special treatment. You think you’re different, but you’re entirely normal. You’re just trying to be special, to say shocking things for the sake of shocking.”

He was right, and he wasn’t. She had days of normality, of functioning, of peace. But in his narrow equation there was no room for the rest of it, for the endless bursting fractals that came out of nowhere and took her into space. Her mother’s genes. The fly in the ointment. The fatal flaw that stopped her from achieving greatness.

“Come to your senses, girl. You had everything.” _Everything_ , Bruce Wayne echoed, and Jonathan Crane, _everything_ , even Lucas or Fiona. “You finally made it into the rooms that matter. Why give that up for a toss of the dice?”

 _Because of the dice_ , a muffled part of her brain tried to tell her, but it was turned way down low, and her ears reverberated with her father’s voice, multiplied by a million. Safety in numbers, _they_ were always right because there was always more of them. Even paired with Joker there was no chance, no way to shout through the noise. 

“And that makeup… Really, Harleen, when did you ever care about makeup? You look normal under all that. If you could just stop _pretending_ …”

“Okay.” The only way was to fall silent. To destroy by ignoring. Not to win the discussion, but to end it once and for all. She walked up to the desk, like walking across the world on feet of air, and grabbed the gun from Joker. To the soundtrack of a collective gasp, she put it against her head. The men beneath her sat up straight, the story taking a turn they didn’t expect. “This is your workplace now, dad. Time to earn a living with some real stakes. _My_ living. Pull the lever, Joker.”

Something in his eyes – was it fear? Regret? Did he know now how it felt to live in the shadow of suicide – someone else’s? Did it matter? Turning in his chair, he grabbed the lever, but it took too much to pull it, she saw it in the wobbly movement, he was losing strength fast. This was what it was like to have a situation truly slip between your fingers. Colors flipped past on the machine, but the gun never left her temple. It was a part of her now. Part of her fucking act.

Three cherries, ding-ding-ding. But cherries only grew in pairs, not threes. It was time to choose.

Out of it, she was out of it. Everything seemed like a game, and it was. _I’m ready to let go_. “First question, then, dad: what’s the evolutionary value of mental illness?”

Her father stared up at her, confused. She saw it through a film of unreality. Was he really here, was she? Was this limbo, and she was about to ascend to heaven or descend to hell? How big of a decision was before her? Was it even hers to make? Free will had always seemed theoretical to her, an illusion masked by a thousand layers of determinism. Did someone already know what she would say, where this game would take them?

“None, surely,” he said, but there was doubt in his voice.

“Wrong answer.” She smiled and pushed the gun harder against skin and bone, just a thin sprawl of veins between her rock-hard skull and a hard place. “What about art?”

“Art?” His voice supplicant now, _please stop this charade, it’s not funny anymore_.

 _Oh, but it is_. “Yes, art.” She closed her eyes, and in her mind’s eye there was Joker dancing, dancing. “Maybe they need it. Artists. Like your extreme mathematical ability, dad. How would you have done your work without seeing the world in black and white, in numbers and relations? How could you have written your books if your brain wasn’t captive to a world-skewing monster, making you see things? Making you divide this thing and that into measurable components, into X:s and Y:s? Well, artists measure things in exes and whys as well.”

“There you go again, romanticizing deviance,” he began, but his voice was weak, the gun was getting to him, a thousand times more effective against her head than his.

“Artists are charged with describing and explaining the world too,” she murmured, and the words came to her from another world. “They reduce the world to a single thing just like you do, not to maths but feelings. And how do they do it? Their brains project it big in the sky, they feel everything on an exaggerated level, because if they didn’t, how could they identify and paint what most of us have a hunch about but can’t explain? You paint in numbers, dad, they paint in euphoria and despair. And where your mind is taken hostage by statistics, theirs are clapped in the irons of emotion. High and low. The Russian roulette of mood chemicals, and them on the frontline, taking enemy fire each moment of each day, all in the service of humanity.”

“Harleen…”

She pushed the gun harder into her temple, and it forced her head left, made her neck tendons tremble. Her father let slip a whimper.

“Second question. This one for you.” She turned to Joker. “How does it feel?”

Joker looked up, caught off guard by the question. 

“The moment won’t come again,” she said. “This is your chance to put into words what it feels like to bring down the house for the first time. And lose everything.”

Her finger moved, he gasped, he leaned forward, hands splayed on the desk. He cared. They both cared. She could have laughed, but there was no air in her lungs. She saw the twitch of muscle as he wavered between laughter and tears. _Yes, tell me which one it is. If you win the world but lose me, what does it mean? Does it mean anything?_

“Pull yourself together, Harleen,” her father begged, but she ignored him, he’d blown his question and she only had eyes for Joker now. Would he fail her too when it came down to it?

“How does it _feel_?” she whispered.

His lashes quivered as he glanced at the audience. _Yes, your precious audience. Can you say something true while they listen? Can you?_

He straightened up and faced her – like a soldier, shoulders squared. His lips curled into a semblance of mirth, a smile held in place by iron and grief, and he said, “I’m Happy.”

For a moment she thought she’d misheard. It sounded wrong, like a word from a foreign language, and then… then she understood. It wasn’t an adjective. It was a name. Her arm fell down, boneless. The gun clattered to the floor. _No, you're not. That was her, all her. A role she gave you. A face, but not your voice._

_Which means..._

Joker scrambled to his feet and swiped the gun from the floor, pointing it at her father. “You did this.”

“No!” Harley stepped in front of him, and something feral pulled her lips apart in a snarl. "I want him to live with it. I want it to settle, to burrow in like a tick. I want him to live with this every fucking day for the rest of his fucking life. I want his blinders gone. I want him to stare at the abyss for once in his fucking life and know that it will always stare back at him." She turned to her father. "Always, you hear? I want you to go mad, a madness there are no pills for, and no God."

But of course it didn’t happen. Instead his face closed like so many times before, concealing with stone what couldn’t be. _Nothing exists without my say-so._

_But I exist. Can’t you see me? I’m right here._

_And I willed you into existence. Therefore you're mine._

Her face was warm and wet, and even though she knew - she _knew_ what was wrong with the picture - it didn't help. _The biggest failure of psychology_. Her superpower was powerless against the true powers of this world. She could argue her point as eloquently as language allowed. She could provide item after item of proof, a complete structure of unassailable logic, but her father and her supervisor and anyone with a puffed-up sense of their own importance could shatter it all with a single _no_. They didn’t even have to argue against her. They could just posit their thesis again, and that was that. When you held all the cards, you didn't have to play them.

She was about to turn to Joker, give him her resignation or whatever, she was worthless and he should reject her this second, but something was happening. Something was derailing in real time. She saw a familiar face – Jason’s, giving some kind of signal – and there was a movement in the audience – something un-audience-like, something deeply wrong – and then a couple of men shot out of the darkness. She recognized them even though they were strangers, recognized them by their grey-green shirts and cropped hair. They poured over the floor, there were more than two, swarming, buzzing, spreading, how many? Fewer than her panicked brain believed, a sane part of her realized, but instinct threw her into hiding behind her father’s chair.

They were betrayed. But of course they were. No one could stage something this big and control every single detail.

She saw in slow motion how one fo them grabbed Joker, bent his arms out of shape like a rubber doll, threw him down on the floor. His face in the dirt, back where he belonged, _stay down, freak_. Just time for one action – to send the gun skittering across the floor and under the chair.

And the wheel stopped on Life decisions, 1 000 000 000.

She bent, she scrabbled between the wooden legs, it was completely mechanical. She stood up and aimed, and she was a machine. Her finger found the trigger, it was mindless. The metal dug into her flesh as it click-click-click-banged. The man’s head burst in a fountain of red that spattered on Joker’s face, his lips, sprinkling the red with burgundy spangles. So easy. It was _so easy_. But there was only one bullet in the gun.

She moved, it was on another plane, she reached behind the desk and there it was, like a port in a storm, and she remembered finding it once before, in her umbrella stand at home: the wooden reassurance of the bat. Another man was descending on Joker, and she took a step and slipped in a pool of red, like soap, like some kind of condiment, but she regained her balance because there was no other choice. Her arms rose, muscles all attuned. This was the third time she used it, third time a charm, extension of her arm. _Crunch_ , and that was that. It dashed to pieces whatever he’d meant to do. It cut his story short because this time, yes, this time he’d taken a wrong fucking turn in this choose-your-own-adventure.

_I can deny your existence too._

__She looked down at the sprawl of legs and arms at her feet, two down, how many to go? Oh, there was one. She went after him, he was trying to escape the stupid fucker, and the bat came down a second time. The audience was screaming, but in her head was silence, silence at last. She’d made them shut up. Irreversibly _shut up_.

She went back to the stage and saw her hand reach for Joker’s. She slipped again, this time in sweat, and grabbed harder. He came to his feet, and for a single thousand-year second they just stood there, gazes locked, anchoring themselves in each other. And she finally understood the laughter. It echoed inside her like freedom, like a waterfall, because what else was there? The ties to sanity were cut. Her heart broke with laughing, and in the breaking was freedom. The pain exploded her boundaries, it was bigger than her, bigger than what she could contain as a single person. It burst all the seams and left her ruined and bloody, boneless and torn.

“I know the secret now," she whispered. "I know how to die without having to die. You just stop _trying_.”

He beamed at her, and his tears were hers. “Yes. Oh, Harley. Finally.” He embraced her, a tight, ferocious embrace that cracked her ribs and stopped the blood-flow.

When he let her go, she turned and looked at the old man in the chair, staring up at her with eyes more white than brown. Something had broken in there, too. The barriers he’d built were razed to the ground and he saw the full scope of the abyss. Her chest filled like a hot air balloon. He knew now, knew the cosmic joke. Everything that had propped him up was gone. He would deny it all in a minute, but for just one moment he _saw_ : that this was no Stockholm rehashed with a new name attached, no male-narrated Joker syndrome centered on the comfortably predictable female tendency to submit. A wish for protection, Jonathan would say, had probably written it in that stupid goddamn book of his. The learned helplessness of the modern woman, the longing to be special - to be the one person the monster didn’t hurt.

_But see, the thing is._

_I’m the monster._ __


	6. Frequency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They might have agreed to listen  
> If I didn't lose control  
> But I was as lost as they were  
> As still as a heart grown cold
> 
> ([IQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNA-6JqKsVQ))

_I’m here._

_My head swims as I blink at the spotlights. Constellations from another galaxy? Then how come I recognize them? How come they’re the same lights as just now, when I wasn’t here? They pierce the darkness of room and mind, beckoning to me, laughing at my confusion._ You’ve been here all along, _they seem to say. But the definition of ‘here’ has changed._

__The studio was emptying quickly with the help of panic and assorted goons – what they were good for, after all. The woman called Harley Quinn stood emptily staring, not meaning to move ever again. The thing that had been her was done, and she remained in a ghost’s position, just continuing what the person had done in life – observing.

_But I’m set loose. I’ve crossed the checkered board and braved all the backwards logic, the kings and queens and eggheads, and I’ve earned my colors, finally. I can remember the future now, just like he can._

__Harley knew she should feel something, but she wasn’t sure what. Everything had changed, and everything was identical to before. The scenery seemed static, but wasn’t. You could never step into the same river twice. Even though the same spotlights that had glistened on her father’s forehead just a few minutes ago now shone on a pool of blood inching towards her feet, the dust motes fell slightly differently now.

She’d passed through.

So many times.

But this time was different.

She remembered throwing up in her bathroom after seeing blood on her pen. Then she’d been finger-fucked on the same floor. Someone hovering above them would have glimpsed them in the mirror: her flushed face as Joker thrust into her. The first breaching, like glass breaking.

A reflection from the other side.

Another image: she’d hit a random intruder with her baseball bat, and then she’d used it again on Wayne. She’d typed on her work computer and then smashed it. She’d lied on TV and then told the truth, and the truth had been a lie and the lie had been a truth. She’d gone to the hospital to meet him, and then she’d gone to the hospital to _meet him_. It all reflected back on itself in a new way, the silver base giving memory a new sheen, disguising the cyclic nature of life with new details that distracted like the magician’s hand.

_And now here we are, ready to retrace our steps to the future._

Joker stepped up to her, eyes a translucent flicker of light in his white makeup. She met his gaze and felt calmness radiate from him, but also from her. Together they were the eye of the storm, but the storm had already died down. Cables and empty screens the only debris from the carnage. Something had happened tonight, but it hadn’t been the Joker Show after all. It had all centered on her.

_Out of nowhere, a gash of sadness divides me in half. I don’t understand it until this moment: I’m here. I’ve arrived. I’ve broken through, and nothing will ever be the same again. If I could weep, I would do so now, but I can’t even sob, not yet. I don’t have that much power, can’t make these limbs move. But even though I’ve never wept, never had reason to because she kept me safe, clapped-in-iron safe, it’s coded into my being from long-dead dreams: the dreams where I visited her. The open door during the night, when she could revel in blood without consequence. The echoes of a childhood when I sometimes came out to play._

__Harley raised her hand and touched Joker’s cheek, even as he did the same. Another mirror, another possible story. Images bouncing back and forth to infinity. They were separate, but they were the same. She wasn’t his, she was him. She’d killed those guys because they were awful.

But the day would come when a mere baseball bat wouldn’t be enough to save him. She saw it as clearly as if it was already happening: police, or vigilantes, or Anticimex, or whatever the hell this world wanted to throw at them, the ultimate end was this: they would drag him into a car and slam the door. His disheveled head would loll on the backrest – again, another reflection – as they drove away from the split-open cocoon of him and her, their poor broken seashell. The tail lights would ooze red into the night as she fought to breathe. After years of cat and mouse games, in the end he’d be got.

And she’d be alone.

More importantly, _he_ would be alone. Against them. Without his guard, his minions, but above all without her.

She gasped for air. “I need to interview you,” she blurted. "Before it's too late. They need to hear _your_ words." 

He looked as surprised as she felt. Where had those words come from? As they stared at each other, the studio lights died down. All that was left was a twilight afterimage, making eyes useless and tired. She searched her mind for the logic, and there was something there, something she couldn't quite reach. If Joker was taken, her life would turn into a series of rooms, of third degrees, of locks and testimonies and defenses. She’d sit in court, the phony cardboard court of real-world judges, and tell her story again and again, and it wouldn’t match Crane’s stupid book and they’d ask her why. And if she didn't have his words, his innermost truth on hand, she'd be without weapons.

_Yes. Exactly._

She shivered. Something was merging with her. Courting her, pleading with her to say yes. Her gaze fell on the gift box she’d left lying in a corner, and that something shifted inside her. Tectonic personalities, moving, colliding, sliding – one crumble-gliding on top, the other squashed down, headed for the deep. The deep and dreamless sleep. _To die, to sleep, no more._

Joker followed her gaze, and his face registered… something. Dismay? Regret? Fear? But she knew now, knew what she needed and didn’t need. _I finally understand. The joining – it’s just a metaphor made flesh. “Come inside me”, “come in me” – it’s all just code for “become one with me”. A literal acting out of a spiritual longing. But her and him are already one, they don’t need to confirm it._

_It’s us._

_We need to do it._

__Moving as if in a trance, she went to get her gift. Her hands didn’t feel like hers anymore. She couldn’t gauge the weight of the box – a ton? A gram? Joker stayed behind by the slippery pool of red left behind by the bodies. She met his eyes and smiled. “You don’t have to do a thing.” _Except stand there like the glorious apparition you are_.

With a sigh, she sank into the chair that Joker had sat in during the show. She imagined his warmth still imprinted, and her skin tingled with it. She leaned her head back and let her eyes half close. His blurry shape shone red and green in the dusk as she breathed in and pulled down her pants.

A long, slow slide. She’d wanted this, she’d wanted him, but sometimes what you wanted wasn’t all that important. Maybe he’d wanted to dance with someone else, but he’d ended up dancing alone. She’d yearned to feel him inside her, hard and hot, but now it was this instead. This folding in on herself, this sealing. His gift buried itself inside her, lodged like an alien fist of bliss in the absolute heart of her. A perfect gift, like he was perfect, _and we are perfect together. I make easy little thrusts, soft and cautious, and she meets them with desperate twisting hips, panic-wanting, needing more, just more, needing the friction in her most sacred self. When I fuck her, it’s heaven opening, sin and salvation all rolled into one. Her body confesses to her own hand, it begs for absolution with each quivering cramp._

_When she comes, I feel it too._

__When she opened her eyes, he was kneeling by her side. “How do you feel?” It was whisper-thin, he knew when to be careful.

_My neck pulses with a faint pain: the echo from the recoil, the snapping of tendons when you go beyond your boundaries. The violence inflicted on the predator, because you can’t deal pain without some of it splashing on you, on her, this body we share._

__“Feel.” She rolled the word over in her mouth. Then she turned her head slightly to catch her reflection in the glass wall that covered the painted skyline. Those shining pinpricks looked so real, and her face hovering above them, dominating the cityscape, was so familiar and yet so new. “I feel…” She swallowed. “… like myself.”

_That’s me. That’s me making her say that. And I can see him hear it. The same happiness comes into his face that I’ve watched from afar, locked away behind her strictness, her desperate commands: Don’t move! Don’t look! Don’t speak! Don’t feel! But I do feel, and now she’s feeling it too. She knows we’re one and the same. This is just the adjustment of the lens, the illusion of a double image until it all comes into focus as one single truth. She laughs a little, it’s teary but definitely a laugh, and something shimmery comes into his eyes when he sees it, because that’s my presence in those shiny droplets, and he’s been waiting for us to merge._

__“H-hello…?” he whispers.

 _Hi_. And then, aloud: “Hi.”

An awed little snort. A soft stroke with tender fingers, the tenderness of large cats with their claws withdrawn. And then he pulls me into his arms. “Welcome home.”


End file.
